


With Clouds Between Our Knees

by commoncomitatus



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 7 [6]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Janice struggles with control, helplessness, and feelings.  Mostly feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic fills a Cross-Square extra on my [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) card.  
> Prompts: Rejection, Panic Attacks (Wild Card)

*

The first time Mel gets on top of her, Janice socks her in the nose.

It comes out of nowhere, the blow, an explosion of reflex and panic that she can’t control and doesn’t really understand. A minute ago — hell, ten seconds ago — they were doing just fine; everything was good, really good and working its way up to something a whole lot better. Then, all of a sudden, _bam_! Right in the face.

And here she is, barely ten seconds later, staring numbly at a fist she doesn’t even remember raising, and Mel… Christ, Mel’s holding her face with both hands and wearing this look, this godawful nightmare of a look that says _‘what have you done?’_.

It’s a good question. Janice doesn’t have an answer.

They’re on the floor of her tent, rolling around in a hurried sort of thing that Mel calls a ‘tryst’, half-dressed and halfway towards hot and heavy. Janice has her shirt off, her pants well on the way to following suit, and Mel’s got this ‘artfully dishevelled’ thing going on; her skirt is hiked up to her waist, her blouse unbuttoned and hanging loose off one shoulder, and Janice is real grateful that she took off her glasses a half-dozen hickeys ago because it dulls the horror to something almost bearable, knowing that she probably can’t see the look on her face.

Janice opens her mouth to apologise, to say something, anything, but she can’t seem to make a sound. She can’t seem to do anything else, either; right now she can’t even breathe. There’s this awful pressure bearing down on her lungs and driving the air right out of her, a strange pain in her chest, old and sort of familiar, and a desperate screaming panic the likes of which she hasn’t felt in years. Her body is frozen, locked up in some kind of seizure, and Jesus Christ why can’t she _breathe_?

She feels like there’s something trapped inside of her, a sob or maybe a scream, so deep that she can’t even hope to reach it. She’s inside out, upside-down and all wrung out, and there’s nothing she can do but lie there like the slack-jawed idiot she is and wait for Mel to slap her senseless.

She doesn’t. Janice doesn’t know why.

For a long long time, Mel just sits there, cradling her nose and staring at Janice’s knuckles like she doesn’t know what to do. Then, voice muffled by her palms, she takes a deep breath and says, “You’re shaking.”

Janice blinks. Is she?

Something is rattling inside her chest. She tries to breathe in, deep and steady and calm, but it hurts too much. She can still feel that awful pressure, Mel’s body bearing down on her, breasts and ribs and hips all crashing and clashing, and it drives that sob-scream- _something_ just a little bit higher, strangling in her throat. She can still feel Mel’s leg pressing up between her thighs, can still feel the warmth and the tension, the sweat slick between them, the air thick and heavy with want. Mel is leaning all the way back now, not even close to her, but Janice can still feel every inch of her body as though it’s still right there.

“Don’t…” she manages, but her throat closes up before she can get anything else out.

Besides, what the hell would she say? _Don’t do that again. Don’t look at me. Don’t ever let me get away with hurting you like that._ So much, and none of it even close to enough.

Slowly, devastatingly slowly, Mel lets her hands fall away from her face. There’s no blood, no swelling or bruises or anything else. Her nose is a little red, maybe, but that’s all; in a couple of hours, it’ll be like nothing ever happened. Still, though, the sight of it makes Janice cringe and turn away, makes a sick sensation start to seethe in her stomach, in her chest, in all the parts of her that are seizing and shaking.

She wants to hide, wants to crawl into a hole. Maybe one of the tunnels out there on the dig site, the rocks burning under the setting sun; wouldn’t it be fitting if Harry Covington’s daughter buried herself alive too? She thinks about it, seriously thinks about it, but her stupid worthless legs won’t let her see it through. Just like the rest of her, they’re paralysed.

So, instead, she just stares some more. Her knuckles are white, the closed fist still hovering in front of her face like a badge or a beacon; it makes a barrier between their bodies, and Mel doesn’t even try to cross it.

She swallows a few times. Her throat tightens then relaxes, tightens then relaxes, tightens…

“Janice?”

“Don’t.” She sounds so hoarse. That can’t be her voice. It sounds nothing like her. “My god, Mel, I…”

“Hush now. Hush.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Well, I can see that.”

How can she be so calm? Janice’s knuckles are throbbing; if she squints hard enough she’s sure she can see the point of contact. Why can’t Mel see it too? Why isn’t she shouting or shaking or sobbing? Why doesn’t she look like Janice feels?

Still moving so damn slowly, Mel swings up onto her feet. Everything about her is like that, slow and steady and strong, like she’s moving through water or treacle. The way she breathes, the way she smoothes down her skirt and buttons up her blouse, the way she pats down her hair, puts everything back in its proper place like this is just another one of their ‘trysts’, nothing new at all.

It’s hypnotic, devastating. It makes Janice’s chest hurt even more than it already is, makes the memory of pressure sharpen into something far worse, makes the scream-sob- _something_ curdle where it’s lodged inside of her.

Finally, when she’s herself again, when her glasses are back on and her hair’s all neat and properly coiffed, Mel sits back down. Not next to Janice where she was before, but on the opposite side of the tent. There’s a couple of dozen feet between them now, and it feels like half the world. Janice cringes, presses herself back against the edge of her sleeping pallet, stretches out the space until it’s bigger, wider, vaster, until it’s not just half the world but all of it, a dozen worlds all squeezed in one cramped little tent.

“I can’t breathe,” she says again.

Mel pushes her glasses up her nose, squints at her over the top of them. “What happened?”

“I hit you.” She thought that was obvious. “Didn’t I?”

“Well, yes.” Mel sighs. “But why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t…” She hugs her knees to her chest, then shuts her eyes tight. The ghost of Mel’s body is still pressing down on her, the echo of her fingers splayed across her ribs, the shadow of her thigh between her legs. “Mel, I can’t _breathe_.”

When she opens her eyes again, Mel is right in front of her, the worlds between them compacted and crushed back down into nothing. She’s crouching real low, making it so her head is an inch or so lower than Janice’s. That helps her breath start itself back up; Janice doesn’t know why.

“What happened?” Mel asks again, enunciating real careful in that slow Southern drawl.

“I don’t know.” But even as she drives the words out of her, new ones are pouring themselves into her mouth. “We were rolling around. You and me, we were… you know, _that_. And then… then you got on top of me. You got on top of me, and you were… your hands and your body, all of you on top of me… and you were so damn heavy, and I couldn’t… I can’t…”

She shakes her head, feels the pressure on her lungs amplify again, worries for a second that she’s going to black out. _Get off me,_ her brain is screaming. _Get off, get off, get off, can’t you see I can’t breathe?_

“Jesus Christ,” she finishes in a gagging whimper.

Mel cups the back of her neck. Slow, so damn slow and so damn careful. Janice expects the contact to panic her, but it doesn’t. The pressure lifts off her chest, and her body heaves.

“I’m gonna step outside a spell,” Mel tells her. The words come slow as well. “See if you can’t calm down some.”

Janice nods, then blurts out in a great gasping rush, “Mel, I’m sorry.”

“Well, now, I should hope so.” She doesn’t sound angry, though, or upset. She doesn’t sound like much of anything. “We’ll talk about it in a bit. All right?”

She leans in as she rises, kisses Janice on the cheek. It’s sweet and soft, light as a feather and completely chaste, but it makes Janice’s pulse quicken, makes her ribs feel like they’re broken, like her lungs are being crushed against them.

It’s only a moment, the faintest flicker of affection, but Mel’s eyelashes are wet when she pulls away. Janice wants to kiss them dry, but those stupid glasses are in the way. They’re like a force-field, like a dozen booby-traps in a dozen buried tombs; the glare from the light above is almost blinding in reflection, and it makes her eyes seem much darker than they are. She’s so beautiful, and Janice doesn’t understand why the sight of her makes her start to tremble again.

She clears her throat. It feels razed and raw, like the rest of her. “Mel…”

“We’ll talk about it in a bit,” Mel says again, firmly.

She’s gone, then, stepping out into the evening, and what little breath Janice managed to draw disappears with her.

*

They don’t talk about it in a bit, or at all.

They kiss a little when Mel comes back to the tent, a wash of warmth that drives the last of the tremors out of Janice and into Mel. It’s not the least bit chaste, but it doesn’t grow into anything more than what it is, Mel’s fingertips brushing Janice’s ribs through the fabric of her shirt, Janice counting out Mel’s heartbeats with her thumb pressed to her neck, a moment in a moment in a moment, swallowed sighs and shared softness and a hundred quiet ways to keep from talking.

It feels like hours before they pull apart. Mel is flushed and beautiful, and Janice lets her fingers trace the lines of her face over and over until she feels calmer.

“You gonna stay?” she asks. Her voice is very small. “Tonight, I mean.”

Mel glances at the cramped little pallet; it’s not much more than a mattress, really, but it served Janice well enough when she was on her own. Sometimes Mel stays in there too, the two of them squeezed into space that doesn’t exist, and sometimes she insists that a grown woman needs space to stretch her legs. It’s about fifty-fifty, the numbers shifting back and forth as the days bleed out, and Janice has found that she feels more at home when Mel’s back is pressed against her, when her chest is rising and falling in rhythm with the clock in the corner.

“Do you want me to?” Mel asks.

Janice feels a spasm in her chest, sharp as a knife, and a terrible sound gurgles in her throat. She tries to answer the question, but she doesn’t know what she wants to say. Yeah, she wants Mel close; she always wants Mel close. But at the same time her lungs hurt now when they’re pressing together like this, Mel’s skin burning like a brand against her own, and that’s never happened before.

Mel sighs when she doesn’t say anything, taking her silence as an answer in itself. “I reckon you’d sleep better on your lonesome,” she says, trying like she always does to make this easier.

“No.” Janice blinks a few times, surprised by her own vehemence. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

_I don’t want to sleep,_ she thinks, feeling broken and stupid. _Not if it means I have to do it without you._

But even as she thinks it, she feels her chest start to seize up all over again.

Mel looks her in the eye, hard and heavy, then turns away with a sigh. “Janice,” she says, drawing out each syllable like she’s talking to a child. “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”

Janice wants to duck her head or look away, or maybe just close her eyes so she won’t have to see the place where Mel’s face met her fist. She wants to make this easier, but she knows that’s never going to happen while Mel’s staring at her like she really cares about the answer. It’s hard, because at the same time as wanting to turn away and hide she also wants to drink down everything she sees, the blue of her eyes and the curve of her mouth, the way her cheekbones lift when she’s thinking.

That’s the thing about Mel: her presence is the most intimidating thing Janice has ever faced, but at the same time she’s a study in everything delicate and fragile and lovely. She’s so far removed from the death and decay that marks and mars their lives out here, the tombs and temples and towns that have been dead and buried for thousands of years. Mel is the opposite of all that; she is phenomenally, incredibly alive, and Janice doesn’t want to miss out on a moment.

“Yeah,” she hears herself whisper. “I want you to stay here tonight.”

And so that’s what happens.

Mel turns away when she gets changed, like she always does, giving the illusion of modesty in the one place in the world that has no need for it. Janice watches, unashamed, tracing the lines of her back, the sweep of her shoulders and the flare of her hips, the rhythm and the music in her motion. She wants to spend hours, maybe even lifetimes, just watching her, letting her body become a study, a sculpture, a portrait. She wants to worship every mark, every blemish, every line, wants to memorise them all until she could recreate her without a thought. She wants to do so many things…

…and yet, when Mel turns around to face her again, dressed in nothing but a satin nightdress, when she pulls Janice in close to kiss her and kiss her some more, when the delicate fabric catches on the toughened leather of her jacket, when it stains with the dirt and sweat of her shirt and her skin, when Mel’s fingertips find her collarbones under her collars, Janice realises that she wants just as desperately to turn around and flee.

She’s scared, she realises. Scared of tainting that beauty with her particular breed of ugliness, scared of ruining Mel with all the horrible things she inherited from her father, the obsessions and compulsions that kept her alive for so long when they were all she had. Survival instincts don’t translate well in the bedroom, experience has taught her; arrogance and anger and over-compensation might be Covington trademarks, but they don’t make for healthy relationships.

Mel is amazing, a catch by anyone’s standards. She’s like a flower in the desert, and Janice is the ocean of sand and dust and emptiness that makes life harder. Mel shouldn’t be thriving out here with her; the laws of nature say that no-one should. But here she is, glowing and gleaming and so unbearably beautiful, and if she closes her eyes and lets the world become still Janice can almost, _almost_ believe—

“Janice.” Mel cuts into her thoughts, killing them with a word. She’s as good with that particular weapon as Janice is with all of hers. “It’s getting late.”

It’s not really, but Janice knows what she’s trying to say. She nods, and shrugs out of her shirt. “All right.”

Her pallet is cramped and small, and not meant for two people. Hell, it’s not really meant for one, but Janice is small enough to make it work when she’s on her own. Mel has a much nicer one in her tent, longer and wider and just a little softer to accommodate her larger frame and expensive tastes, but they never spend the night together there. They stay here, or else Janice stays here and Mel stays there; that’s just the way it is. Neither one of them has ever stopped to question why.

Mel squeezes herself up against the wall, and Janice crawls in beside her. She sleeps in an old, oversized tee-shirt, legs bare and tangled up in Mel’s. It’s a strange juxtaposition, the cotton heavy against Mel’s fitted satin, but Mel never complains or calls her uncouth, even though they both know she is.

She stared real hard the first time they did this, the first time she saw Janice in nothing but that big old tee-shirt. Janice remembers cringing, waiting for the inevitable insult. She expected a critique, a sigh or a head-shake, a promise to take her shopping the next time they wandered into town. Instead, she got a wave of tenderness that broke her heart. As gentle as a breeze, Mel circled her waist with her hands and said, “My goodness, you’re nothing but skin and bones.”

Janice doesn’t think that’s true — she’s muscle, dammit, and sinew — but Mel was kissing her when she said it and so she didn’t argue.

She holds Mel fiercely when the light goes out, face pressed to the spot where her nightdress slips off her shoulder. Mel is fast asleep almost before her head hits the pillow, limbs loose and breathing even, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be lying here like this, to be wrapped up in the arms of a screwed-up archaeologist with control issues, like it’s safe. It’s not, goddammit, and Janice can never quite figure out whether to be awed or angry at Mel for thinking it is.

Mel is so blissful in her ignorance, so utterly unaware of the dangers lurking behind every corner, the darker things hidden by the soft shadows of her arms. She has no idea how unsafe it is, sleeping so free and easy, to say nothing of sleeping with _her_. She’s never had to worry about things like that. Until the day she walked into Janice Covington’s tent, danger was just something that happened in children’s adventure books.

The thought sends a jolt through her, ice slithering down her spine; she bites her lip to keep the feeling inside. Mel was innocent to so many things before she walked into Janice’s tent that day. She might not regret it yet, but Janice knows that someday soon she will. Tomorrow or next week or next month… she can’t say exactly when, but she knows that it will happen.

She ducks her head to hide the noise bubbling in her chest, buries her face in the satin, clings to Mel’s body like a soldier to his gun. Her heart is hammering, the blood rushing in her ears so much louder than Mel’s rhythmic breathing, so much louder than the clock or the bugs chirping outside, so much louder than the whole damn world.

She’s angry and frightened, and she feels so damn helpless. There’s nothing in the world she wants more than to stay like this forever, her and Mel wrapped up in each other, close and warm and imagining the world is safe. There’s nothing in the world she wants more than to keep Mel in her arms for the rest of her goddamn life and beyond, to hold her and protect her and make sure nobody ever tries to hurt her again. All she wants is to look Mel right in the eye and say, _‘I won’t ever let anything happen to you,’_ but she can’t because she knows it’s not true.

That scares the hell out of her. More than dying, more than anything she’s ever known. Mel is not safe with her, and she never will be.

It doesn’t matter how tough Janice is, or how good at her job. It doesn’t matter if she spends every minute of every day standing in front of Mel or holding her close or watching her back. None of that matters at all. What matters is the simple, inescapable truth: one day, Mel is going to get hurt out here. The ground will give out underneath her or the ceiling will fall in, or else some brave new sucker with an itchy trigger finger is going to come after Janice and find Mel instead. It happened once, and it’ll happen again, and there’s not a damn thing Janice can do but wait and pray to God she’ll be in the right place when it does.

Janice has never been much for praying. Faith is Mel’s gig; Janice’s is sheer bull-headed stubbornness. But she’d change her ways without hesitation if she thought for a second it would keep Mel safe.

The helplessness lashes her again, ruthless and staggering. She shudders against Mel’s back, clenching the silk nightdress between her teeth to keep the scream inside. Mel is a deep sleeper, despite Janice’s best efforts to keep her alert, and she probably wouldn’t wake even if she howled, but still she tries to control it, to control herself. The alternative — losing it again, and losing it here — terrifies her beyond imagining. She already lost it once in front of Mel today. She’ll go straight to Hell before she’ll do that again.

So, instead, she just holds her. Shuddering and shaking and desperate, she buries her face in Mel’s shoulder, breathing in the silk and sweat like it’s the only thing keeping her alive.

_Don’t let go,_ she tells herself. _Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t ever…_

*

She wakes a couple of hours later, jolted out of a dozing half-sleep by Mel’s whimpers.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Hell, it’s not even the fifteenth. Mel sleeps deeply, and she dreams deeply too; she’s more affected than she’d ever admit by the experiences that brought her here, the moment when she strolled into some stranger’s tent only to be held and threatened at gunpoint. She took it like a champ back then, and she still laughs it off on the rare occasion when they talk about it, but her dreams don’t lie and Janice isn’t surprised in the least when the memories resurface like this.

“I could’ve been _killed_ ,” Mel is mumbling, a quarter of the way between asleep and awake.

Janice swallows. There’s a lump in her throat that makes it hard to talk. “I’d never let that happen,” she whispers, and damn near chokes to death on the lie.

Mel trembles against her, shifting when Janice shakes her by the shoulder. She comes back to herself gradually, and Janice holds her as tight and as close as possible, a reminder to them both that they’re a million miles away from all of that.

Slowly, always so damn slowly, Mel’s eyes flutter open. “Janice?”

Janice’s breath is a knotted, tangled vine, a noose around her throat getting tighter and tighter. She feels like she’s choking, like she did earlier when Mel was on top of her, when she socked her in the jaw and Mel just said _“hush now.”_ She couldn’t breathe then and she can’t breathe now.

She wants to say that, or at least to try, wants Mel to know and understand like she did back then. She wants to hear those words again, futile and worthless, wants the distraction of wondering why Mel isn’t angry, but she knows that she has no right to any of that. This isn’t her moment; it’s Mel’s, and Janice won’t take it away from her.

So, with a great force of will, she nods. “Yeah.” Her voice is raw, a horrible rasp, but still somehow it seems to draw out some comfort. “Yeah, it’s me. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

Mel lets out a desperate cry, caught somewhere between grief and relief, and buries her face in Janice’s neck.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she gasps, face wet and warm. “Thank _goodness_. I thought…”

“I know.” Janice rubs her back. Slow, careful, all the things she’s learning from Mel. “But it’s okay. I’m here, and it’s okay.”

After a few whimpering moments, Mel pulls back to look at her. Her cheeks are wet, her lashes too, but the blue of her eyes carries a strange kind of calm when they meet Janice’s. She looks almost like she’s been split in two, the part of her that was terrified just a moment ago grating and grinding against the part of her that is so strong and so brave, the part that would step up against anyone or anything and smile because this is the life she chose for herself.

“Janice,” she whispers.

“I’m here,” Janice says again. “I’m right here.”

Mel touches her face, as though awed by the truth of it. “So am I.”

“Yeah.” She swallows very hard. “So are you.”

And then, without taking so much as a second to absorb it, Mel is kissing her. 

It’s not sweet and slow like it was before; it’s open-mouthed and hungry and bordering on desperation. Mel doesn’t get that way very often, but she does when she’s feeling like this, when she’s letting go of her night terrors and replacing them with something truer and more tangible. She kisses Janice like she’s her lifeline, like she really can keep her safe from all the things that haunt her, and Janice wants to wrench her body away, wants to tell her that it’s hopeless, but Mel is holding on so damn tight, and she can’t, she won’t, she doesn’t…

She gasps into her mouth, taken by the moment, and lets her eyes slide shut when Mel meets the sound with her tongue.

_‘Please,’_ she’s saying, and Janice wonders how she knows that, how she can hear the word so clearly even though neither one of them has ever said it.

She gasps again, and shudders against her. Strange, how she feels so much more exposed here in the dark under the blankets and her tee-shirt and all the rest of it than she ever does out in the open when they’re rolling around on the floor half-naked, exposed for anyone to see. Mel’s got one hand at the back of her neck, keeping her close as she licks at her lips, and Janice doesn’t resist as the other hand slides down, as Mel finds her wrist and thumbs her pulse.

“Janice,” she whispers, not begging but asking just the same. _Can we do this? Is it all right?_

Mel always asks those sorts of questions. Janice doesn’t understand why; she’d never say no.

She wants to, though. This time, for the very first time, she wants to.

She can’t shake the memory of earlier. She can still see Mel’s face in the moment after she socked her, the wide-eyed horror and the way she clutched at her nose. She can still feel the pressure on her ribs, her lungs, her whole body, can still feel the panic as she fought and failed to breathe. It still feels so damn _present_ , even all these hours later, even though Mel has clearly all but forgotten about it.

Janice doesn’t want that for herself, the blissful ignorance of forgetting. It was her fist, and she was the one who couldn’t breathe. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, a painful one, and that’s hers too if she can bear to learn it.

She wants to end this. She feels raw and razed, and she wants to end the moment before it begins. She wants to roll over and pretend to go back to sleep. She wants to slow her pulse so that Mel can’t feel how fast it is, wants to slow down every last part of her until it stops, until she stops, until everything just _stops_. She wants…

She wants Mel to feel safe. And that is so much more important than anything else.

Mel kisses her again, one last time, and then her mouth is following the trail laid out by her fingers, down over her shoulders and her arm, finding her wrist and licking at her pounding pulse.

_This_ , Janice thinks. This is what makes Mel feel safe, what makes her feel alive. She knows that because they’ve done this before, because they do it often. Mel wakes whimpering, sometimes crying, and Janice holds her and rubs her back and tells her that she’s here, that they’re both here, and then Mel’s kissing her, and then they’re doing _this_. Every time, exactly the same. She knows the rhythm like she knows her own body.

Mel thrives in these moments. They bring her back to life, raise her up from the depths her dreams tried to drown her in; they remind her that her body is still her own, that her blood and her breath and her bones are all her own, that no phantasm will ever take them away from her. They reawaken her, bring her back to that moment where _“I could’ve been killed”_ became _‘but I wasn’t’_.

Janice saved her back then, that day in her tent, and she saves her again every night this happens, every night Mel wakes afraid and unseeing, every night she jolts Janice out of her own hazy shadows, every night they tangle up their limbs and pretend it’s not dangerous. Again and again she saves her, or else she pretends to, and she can no more turn away from doing it now than she could have turned away on that fateful day and left Mel to Smythe’s goons.

Mel presses a kiss to her palm, then one to the pad of her thumb, and then she’s taking Janice’s fingers into her mouth, circling with her tongue, inviting and offering and asking. It’s seductive, almost wanton; it makes Janice shiver right down to her thighs. She feels her fingers twitch, feels Mel’s lips respond, hears her own voice gasp “ _Jesus_.”

Then Mel’s hands are at her waist, sliding the fabric of her tee-shirt up just a little then slipping down to rest on her hips. Her fingers are slender but strong, powerful where they dig into the naked flesh, and Janice imagines them leaving little brands on her body. White marks with her fingerprints burned onto the skin, maybe a bruise or two against the bone. It arouses her more than she cares to admit, the thought of Mel leaving a mark on her, the notion that she’s strong enough to leave whatever marks she wants.

“Here,” Mel says, the word mumbled clumsily around Janice’s fingers, and then she lifts her up and over her.

Janice groans. Her body ignites, relieved by the familiarity of this, of Mel being under her, of Janice being the one who’d get shot first if anyone walked in on them. _You’re safe,_ she thinks, rubbing herself against Mel’s stomach, and yes, yes they are, just as long as they stay exactly like this.

She shudders for a moment, feeling Mel quivering beneath her, then bows her head to kiss her neck, her shoulder, her collarbones. She spreads her legs a little wider, bracing her knees on either side of Mel’s waist, then rises to hold herself above her. Mel shifts, the satin of her nightdress rippling like water, flowing in the space between their bodies, and Janice feels herself tighten up all over. She wants the silly thing gone, but she doesn’t pull it off her; she just slides it up a bit with her free hand, leaves Mel exposed where she needs, and lets that be enough.

Mel holds her hips again, harder now. Her thumbs dip lower, just skirting the junction of her thighs. Janice sucks in a breath, freezes for a moment in spite of herself, then slips her fingers out of Mel’s mouth.

“I’m here,” she whispers, but it’s not Mel she’s talking to. “We’re both here.”

“We’re here,” Mel echoes faintly. Her eyes flutter closed as Janice slides her hand down. “We— oh _my_ …”

Janice smiles, strokes her in lazy circles. “Yeah.”

Mel squirms under her touch. Her hips hitch and lift, aching for more, but she bites down on her lip and doesn’t cry out. They both know better than to make too much noise. She holds Janice tighter, squeezing her hipbones vice-tight until it hurts, and Christ, Janice doesn’t understand why that feels so good, why it doesn’t paralyse her like it did when Mel was on top of her. She couldn’t breathe back then; she panicked and punched her, and she can still feel the moment of impact vibrating all through her bones. It terrified her then, but _now_ and _this_ …

Well. Frankly, she’s having a hard time breathing now too. But it is oh so very different.

Holding herself up on her knees, she lifts her free hand to find one of Mel’s, covering her fingers where they rest on her hip. She presses down on her knuckles as hard as she can, until Mel’s grip tightens, harder and harder and _yes_.

Janice slips inside her, then, keeping the rhythm of her own rising passion, and Mel echoes the sentiment aloud. “Yes,” she groans, and “ _oh_ ,” and other nameless noises, nonsense that makes Janice duck her head back down to kiss her into silence.

Mel builds quickly, clenching around her fingers, writhing and tensing against her thumb, frenzied and feverish and just about the most beautiful thing Janice has ever seen or felt or known. She could spend her whole life like this, inside of her and on top of her and surrounding her completely. _You’re safe,_ she thinks again, lost in her own kind of frenzy. _You’re safe and you’re here and I’m here and we’re…_

“Oh my!”

The interruption is sharp, a keen sort of half-wail that comes out far louder than it should. Mel gasps an apology, then takes the fabric of Janice’s tee-shirt between her teeth to quiet the rest before it surfaces. Her body is shaking against her, shuddering and shivering, muscles pulled tight enough to pop, and _this_ , this is everything, this is the most wonderful, the most powerful feeling in the whole damn world, kneeling over her and holding her and taking her and pleasuring her, drawing out the shivers and the shudders, mouth half-open and wet against her lips and her jaw, sucking and swallowing down the shouts they can’t let out.

Mel always comes with her whole body. Her fingers are as hard as iron, digging into Janice’s hips until the bones feel bruised and nearly broken; her chest is heaving, her breath coming in strangled gasps, her thighs locked in violent, vibrant spasms around Janice’s hand. She could kill a man with those thighs or those fingers; hell, she could probably kill a man with her heaving chest if she set her mind to it. Janice would give anything to be slain by any one of those things right now.

She doesn’t understand the difference. Mel was so gentle when she rolled them over earlier, so tender and sweet; she didn’t want to claim her, she just wanted to love her, but still somehow it left Janice paralysed. Here, now, like this, Mel is a force of nature, a torrent of strength and power, and _oh_ , Janice adores it. She thrives in this, in Mel unleashing all of herself, her passion and her ferocity and her wild untamed beauty, all those things she keeps locked up so damn tight when the sun is up. 

Janice is undone, wrecked and ruined by the thought of bruises on her hips, of having Mel’s fingerprints burned so deep inside her that no-one else will ever see them. It guts her, rends her, gets her wet, but only when she’s on top.

The thought hits her hard, lands at a strange angle in her chest. It leaves her breathless, not in the good way like a moment ago but the bad way, the way it was before. She chokes, flinches, and pulls out of Mel just a bit too fast.

Mel hisses, discomfort flashing behind her eyes for a fraction of a second before dissolving in a flush of post-coital euphoria. She lets go of Janice’s hips, and falls back against the pillow with a big dopey grin on her face, all that beautiful tension bleeding out of her body and giving way to a hazy, lazy languor.

Janice stays on top of her. She doesn’t think she can move.

Mel smiles up at her, eyes heavy and half-lidded. “Give me a moment,” she says, still a little high. “Then we’ll see about…”

“No.”

The sharpness surprises them both. Mel frowns and tries to sit up a little. “No?”

Janice winces, struggles to soften. “I mean, uh…” She swallows, clears her throat, swallows again. There’s something lodged in there, corrugated like the edge of an excavated sword. “I’d rather just stay like this.”

“Like this?” Mel echoes, still frowning.

She rests her hands on Janice’s knees, still braced on either side of her body; Janice wonders if she can feel the tension there. The muscles in her thighs are burning a little now, sore from holding her body up for so long, but she doesn’t care about that at all. She feels like she’s wobbling on a tightrope, like the whole damn world will fall out from under her if she makes one wrong move.

“Yeah.” She breathes in slowly, reminds herself that she still can. “That okay?”

“Well, sure, but…” Mel scrubs at her face, like she’s trying to erase the frown. It doesn’t really work. “You sure that’s all you want?”

Janice nods. She’s blinking very rapidly, and it’s taking every ounce of strength she has not to turn away and hide her face. “Just for a little while.”

Mel blinks too, not rapidly at all, then shrugs. Apparently she’s learned by now not to ask too many questions when Janice says or does or wants something irrational. The confusion is obvious, palpable, but she rolls with it because she wants Janice to be happy. She doesn’t have to understand; she’s so much better than Janice at accepting that.

So she just lets it happen. Still glassy-eyed from her climax, she rests there on her back for a beat or two, then lifts herself up just high enough to press a kiss to Janice’s mouth.

“You’re a strange one, Janice Covington,” she says, voice rich with affection. “You know that?”

Janice swallows hard. Her throat feels raw, her chest worse. It’s getting hard to breathe again.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I know that.”

*

The sun rises a few hours later, and Janice rises with it.

Mel’s fast asleep again, breathing deeply with her face to the wall, and it’s no challenge at all for Janice to disentangle herself and slip away without waking her. She’s always been something of an expert in sneaking around unnoticed — a necessary talent in her line of work — and in any case she suspects Mel could probably sleep through an earthquake without much trouble. It makes for a good partnership in moments like this when Janice wants some time to herself, if somewhat less so on the mornings when she needs Mel up and at ’em some time before noon.

She patrols the dig site with a cigar between her teeth, checking that everything’s in order, keeping an eye out for intruders or anything unsavoury, making sure they’re safe and secure. There’s not much risk right now — not many even know she’s out here — but still old habits die hard, and she can’t quite bring herself to set that one aside. She’s got her men keeping watch like always, others readying to get the work under way as the morning makes its start, but for the most part it’s all very quiet. Peaceful, or as close to it as she’s ever known. If only for a little while, Janice can almost pretend her life is normal.

By the time she gets back to her tent, maybe an hour or so later, Mel is starting to stir. Janice watches her roll around, smiling in spite of herself at her sleepy little noises. She knows every line on Mel’s body, every curve, everything; she could map out each and every body part she sees shifting and stretching underneath the moth-eaten old blanket. She could do other things to them too, but she doesn’t. It’s too damn early.

Instead, she makes coffee.

That’s not as easy as it sounds given the current climate. Most places would probably kill a man for half the supply she has, and still call it a decent price. It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, Janice knows; a year or two down the line, and she suspects it’ll be damn near impossible to come by. For the time being, though, she’s not ashamed to pull in whatever favours it takes to keep it flowing.

Coffee is the stuff of the gods, for her and everyone around her; it raises morale among the men, keeps Mel conscious on those before-noon days, and — most of the time, at least — it keeps Janice in control of her faculties and her fists. It’s as precious as gold dust, and nearly as expensive, but Jesus Christ if it ain’t worth every cent.

It percolates noisily on the little makeshift stove, and the sound rouses Mel somewhat. She sits up in bed, messy-haired and dishevelled and still so damn sleepy, and Janice can’t take her eyes off her. She wants to kiss every part of her, wants to crawl back onto that stupid little pallet, boots and clothes and all, and hold her until the world undoes itself, until the one out there is as safe as the one in here. She wants to do so many things she knows she can’t; the coffee feels like such a cheap consolation prize next to all that.

She pours it out carefully when it’s done, two little tin cups, one for each of them. Mel gets a bit more because… well, because she’s Mel. Janice is about as selfish as a person can get, but she’d give up a whole lot more than her morning caffeine fix for the look on Mel’s face when she gets hers.

“My goodness,” she murmurs, taking the cup and warming her hands on it. “You do know how to treat a lady.”

Janice grins. It makes her cheeks hurt. “I aim to please.”

“Well, you surely do that.” Mel closes her eyes as she takes a sip, long and luxuriant and incredibly alluring. “Oh my…”

Janice doesn’t touch her own. She’s too busy drinking in the sight of Mel. “Good?”

“My goodness, yes.” Mel drinks slowly. Her lips are obscenely wet, her eyes sparkling with warmth and laughter, every inch of her a monument to grace and beauty. “Doctor Covington, are you trying to make me fall in love with you?”

Janice chokes.

Mel doesn’t notice. The coffee has her full attention, thank God. “You keep lavishing me with gifts like this,” she goes on, “and you may just succeed.”

That does not help at all. Janice tries to swallow, tries to breathe, tries to summon any kind of response at all, but it’s all she can do just to keep from blacking out. She tugs at her collar, feels the tent walls start to close in around her.

“Jesus Christ…”

The name comes out strangled and hoarse, less like the curse she intended and more like a genuine prayer to the Almighty. No doubt Mel would approve, if she was paying enough attention to hear it. Janice doesn’t know whether to be grateful to the coffee for shielding her dignity in a moment of humiliation, or affronted that Mel is too damn oblivious to realise that she’s choking herself halfway into the damn grave.

Probably the former. The last thing she wants this early in the morning is for Mel to notice that the ‘L’ word sends her into paroxysms.

It’s a long while before Mel looks up from her coffee, and she’s still oblivious when she does. She’s grinning the same dopey grin she wore last night after Janice rocked her world, and when she speaks it’s with the same blissed-out giddiness too.

“Thank you,” she says.

That grin is a deadly weapon Janice thinks; it’s brighter than the sun and just as blinding. She tries to smile back, but her face is frozen. It’s hard to do much of anything when every ounce of her strength is being poured into keeping herself upright.

“Sure,” she manages, a horrible-sounding squeak.

Mel sets the coffee cup aside, empty but for the dregs, and touches her arm. “I mean it,” she says, very quietly, and there’s a weight to the words that says maybe she’s not quite so oblivious after all.

“It’s just coffee, Mel.”

_Keep telling yourself that, you sentimental moron._

Mel shakes her head, clearly thinking the same thing, but she’s smart enough not to give it voice. She brushes down the sleeve of Janice’s jacket, idle and thoughtless, like she’s shaking off some imaginary layer of dust or dirt or something. It would be kind of pointless if she was — in a place like this, there’s dust and dirt everywhere — but Janice isn’t nearly so stupid as to believe that’s the point. The point, she knows, is that it stops them having to look each other in the eye.

She hates that, quite frankly. Mel knows what makes her uncomfortable, knows how to soften it into something she can swallow. No-one has ever known her that well.

“Now, you be sure and get a good breakfast in you,” Mel says. It comes out of nowhere, like she can hear the gears grinding in Janice’s head and wants to distract her. “The good Lord knows, we can’t have you fainting away in that midday heat.”

Janice snorts. “Have you ever known me to miss a meal?”

“Oh, only three times a day.”

That’s true enough. Janice has never been particularly good at taking care of herself, even when she was the only one in her life, and she’s not about to pretend it isn’t true now she’s finally got someone who gives a damn. She clears her throat a couple of times, breath coming a little easier with the distraction of mundane chatter, and when she speaks again it’s with her usual cool arrogance.

“Guess I’m lucky I have you around to keep me fed and watered, huh?”

Mel chuckles, then leans in to kiss her on the cheek. Janice is a little sweaty from wandering around all morning, the exertion still flushing her face, and Mel brushes the hair out of her eyes with a disapproving little _‘tsk’_. If she were feeling just a little more like herself, the look on her face would make Janice laugh; no matter how long Mel’s been sitting in on this operation, she still can’t grasp the concept of honest hard work, or the stains it leaves on the skin. Janice doesn’t know why she lets her get away with it.

“You’ll work yourself into the darn grave,” Mel sighs, and thumbs away the sweat still pricking her temples.

“Ah, knock it off.” Janice swats her hand away, but lets her keep her fingers attached. That’s more than she’s ever allowed anyone else who tried this stuff. “You’re not my mother, Mel. You’re my…”

But she can’t finish. Again, damn her, she can’t push the words past her seizing, stupid throat.

Mel smiles. Maybe she senses the discomfort, maybe not. Either way, she plays it light. “Your what?”

“Jesus.” The word rasps and rattles. “You know what.”

“Well, now, I surely do not.” There’s a teasing smile on her face, and something maddeningly deliberate in the way she traces Janice’s jaw with the back of her hand, soothing and igniting her all at once. “Your… friend? Your… colleague? Your…”

“ _Partner_ ,” Janice blurts out, choking on the truth of it. “My _partner_.”

“Professionally speaking?”

“I don’t… that’s… you’re not…” Her shirt suddenly feels very tight. She tugs at the collar, biting down on her lip to keep from whimpering. “Jesus, Mel.”

Mel chuckles, and kisses her thoroughly, chasing away the panic with a different, more welcome breed of breathlessness.

“I declare,” she says. “You’re never quite so adorable as when you’re flustered.”

“I’m not flustered.”

That’s all too true. ‘Flustered’ would at least make a kind of sense; God knows, Mel could fluster anyone with that damn smile. Shameful as it would be, Janice could handle being flustered.

_This_ , though? The tightness in her chest, the pressure on her lungs and her ribs and her stomach, the strangled pain choking her throat, the way she can’t breathe or think or speak, the panic and the lashing out, the desperate need to escape… that goes way deeper than ‘flustered’, and it’s damn near killing her.

She wants to say all that out loud. _This ain’t ‘cute’, Mel, it’s scaring the life outta me._ She knows that Mel would understand; she understands everything. But she can’t do it.

That’s not hyperbole, either. For once in her life it’s not about stubbornness or arrogance or the need to appear tougher than she is. Oh, no. She literally cannot do it.

The words seize on her tongue every time she tries, leaving her helpless and mute. They seethe in her stomach, strangle in her throat, stall and stumble and suffocate her. They bite her, brand her, beat her into submission and raze her raw, and when they finally let go she’s left in silence, scared and alone with nothing but the old worn-out defence mechanisms that were her lifelines for so damn long, the clenched teeth and clenched fists of a life lived on the edge.

Mel’s laughter, soft and low, brings her back down to earth with a bump. It’s a reminder, that beautiful laughter, that Mel is still here with her, that she can’t hear any of those awful things, that she really can’t see the difference between ‘flustered’ and ‘drowning’.

Funny how that works. Mel is so damn observant most of the time, but in moments like this she couldn’t see the nose in front of her damn face.

“Breakfast, Doctor Covington,” she says, like the conversation never changed at all.

Janice swallows hard enough to hurt. She doesn’t think she could eat a thing right now, but she nods anyway because Mel’s smile chases some of the darker feelings away.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

“Good.” Mel kisses her deeply, then pulls away with a reluctant sigh. “Now, then, if you need me I’ll be in the back, making myself presentable. Goodness only knows what those fellas out there would think if they caught me sneaking out of your tent looking like this.”

Janice hates that this is a genuine concern, not just for the sake of Mel’s vanity but for their own goddamn safety. Christ, how she hates the world they live in.

“Sure,” she says, and clenches her jaw.

Mel sighs again at the sight of her. “Now, now. Quit your pouting. You’ll get wrinkles.”

Janice doesn’t point out that a life of stress and sun has already given her plenty of those.

Mel hovers for another beat or two, no doubt checking that Janice really isn’t about to start arguing, then turns and shuffles off towards the back of the tent, the little semi-private corner that serves as a washroom.

They don’t have much in the way of facilities out here, and it’s been a hell of a learning curve for someone as prim and proper as Mel. A basin of lukewarm water and a towel is pretty much all the _toilette_ Janice has ever known, but Mel was raised normal and it’s taken some getting used to. Exposure and experience are good teachers, though, and she’s growing into a real trouper about it; lately, she only complains five or six times a day.

Christ if it ain’t worth the whining, though, for the swing of her hips as she moves, the way she hums to herself, all caffeine-high and morning-bright, utterly oblivious to the world beyond this little room. _Christ_ , if it ain’t worth it for the way she casts a glance over her shoulder now and then, the way she catches Janice’s eye like she sees all those beautiful things in her too, like…

…like maybe Janice isn’t the only one who’s sickeningly smitten.

“Hey, Mel?”

She blurts it out without thinking, and immediately wishes she undo it. She can feel the horror rising up in her, the realisation of what she’s thinking, what she’s about to _say_. It’s a jolt of something far stronger than caffeine that makes her heart race now, that makes her nerves stand on edge as she licks her lips and tastes the question on her tongue.

Mel stops in her tracks, turning around with her whole body. “Hm?” she asks, pushing her glasses up her nose.

Janice swallows. Her palms are sweaty, shaking at her sides, but there’s no going back now. Not without looking like a damn fool, at least, and that’s not something she’ll ever do by choice. She clears her throat, holds her breath, and dives in.

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” Mel asks, frowning.

She’s not trying to play coy, Janice can tell; she really is confused. Not that the distinction helps much. Janice wipes her palms on her pants, willing herself not to say _‘forget it’_.

“You know.”

Mel huffs an impatient sigh. “Now, I’m telling you I do not. You got something on your mind, for pity’s sake just say it straight.”

_It ain’t that simple,_ Janice thinks, but of course she doesn’t say so.

She tries to swallow again, but her body won’t allow it. Her throat’s too parched, and her stomach is churning; there’s no way she’s getting breakfast now.

“You _know_ ,” she says again, insistent. “That crap you said before. About… about me making you fall in…”

But of course she still can't say the damn word.

“Oh, that.”

It’s so damn dismissive, the way she says it. Like it’s no big deal, like it’s not the worst kind of torture, like the very idea isn’t the scariest thing in the whole damn world. Janice wants to shake her for it, but she doesn’t. It’s difficult to shake someone else when she’s shaking so hard herself.

“Do you…” She closes her eyes, but that doesn’t help either. She can still see the ghostly afterimage of Mel’s, blue and bright and beautiful, burning on her eyelids. They frighten her, but not nearly as much as the words tripping and stumbling over her tongue. “Do you really think you could?”

When she opens her eyes again, Mel’s are even brighter, and _right there_. The ‘making herself presentable’ thing apparently forgotten, she’s stood in front of her again, her hands at Janice’s face, staring right into her. Not just her face, but her soul, or at least it seems that way. She touches her so tenderly, like Janice deserves that kind of tenderness, like she’s not the reason Mel will likely die out here.

The contact shakes her to the bone, leaves her trembling and feeling very small. She tries to lift her hands, to catch Mel’s and pull them away, but her body still won’t move. She wishes she’d just black out and be done with it; anything is better than this paralysis, this goddamned helplessness.

Mel takes the initiative for her, leaning all the way in until their foreheads are touching. Her breath is warm, sweet despite the bitter aftertaste of coffee, and Janice’s mouth falls open to catch it.

They’re both breathless when they pull away. Flushed and glowing, Mel kisses her cheek.

“Yeah,” she says, strong and brave and everything Janice is not. “I really think I could.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

A couple of days later, there’s a collapse in one of the tunnels.

Blessedly, Mel isn’t there to see it. Janice sent her into town early in the morning for supplies — water, food, and anything else she thinks is necessary; Mel might not have a digger’s work ethic but she’s damn good at budgeting — and that’s a good half-day’s worth of running around. She’s only been gone a couple of hours when the thing comes down, and selfishly that’s all Janice can think about in the chaos that comes after. _Thank God Mel isn’t here, thank God she doesn’t have to see this._

For her part, Janice knows this particular breed of horror as intimately as her own skin. She’s been through it a thousand times before with varying degrees of intimacy, though experience doesn’t soften the blow at all. It’s the usual nightmare, screaming rocks and screaming people, a three-hour scramble to dig out her buried workers. She knows it’s a wasted effort long before she gets in there, knows they were likely dead within seconds, but still she sweats herself sick to free their crushed, mangled corpses from the endless nightmarish dark.

It’s evening by the time Mel gets back, and by then it’s all over. The remaining workers are in their tents and Janice is in hers, working through the rage in the only way she knows. She’s got a pile of boxes and busted old machinery stacked up to the ceiling, the heaviest and most immoveable crap she could scrounge, and is pounding at it mercilessly with her bare fists.

She’s been at it for an hour or so when Mel shows up, and still going strong. Her knuckles are bloody and bruised, her shirt soaked in sweat, but she neither cares nor notices. She wouldn’t notice Mel, either, if not for the fact that she forces her hand.

Unaware of the danger zone she’s stumbling into, she throws her body between Janice and the stack of junk with her eyes wide and her hands high.

“Janice Covington, what in the world—”

But that’s as far as she gets. Slow on the uptake as she is sometimes, it only takes a half-second’s glance at Janice’s rage-streaked face for the question to die on her lips, replaced by a quiet, contrite “… _oh my_.”

Janice gives her a shove. It’s not violent, but it’s sure as hell not gentle. “Get out of my way.”

Mel doesn’t flinch. She’s been hanging around Janice too long by now to be intimidated by an outburst like that. She does as she’s told, because she’s not stupid, but it’s not an act of surrender. She’s got her shoulders thrown back, chest thrust out as if to say _‘don’t you dare push me again’_.

“What happened?” she asks, voice pitched real low.

Janice snarls and goes back to pummelling her junk pile. Her knuckles are screaming now, the interruption breaking through the red rage and leaving her vulnerable; the adrenaline’s ebbing away, her body all too aware of the pain she’s putting it through, and this time the violence is futile and weak. She keeps going, though, because the alternative is stopping, and she knows that if she does that she’ll hit the ground.

“Four-B collapsed,” she says, gritting out the words in the echoing emptiness between blows. “Two men dead. A week’s worth of digging down the drain. God knows how many artefacts lost in the rubble.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mel go pale. “Oh my.”

“Yeah.” She hunches forward for a moment, driving the pain down, then starts punching again. “If you’re smart, you’ll get out of here. I’m not the kind of company you want to take your chances with right now.”

It’s not a threat; it’s a warning. Mel has to know that, but still she doesn’t move. “You’re bleeding,” she observes.

Janice throws another sickening punch. “So?”

“So…” Mel shakes her head. “So, now, don’t you think you oughta take a step back and let me take a look at it?”

“No.”

“Janice…”

“ _Mel_.”

Another punch, then another; the third lands too hard and at just the wrong angle, and then it’s all over. The pain in her knuckles explodes, shattering into something even Janice Covington can’t fight off, and then she’s down on her knees in the dirt, spitting and swearing and trying desperately not to give Mel the satisfaction of seeing her black out.

The pain tears through her, throws her breakfast into her mouth, but the rage is so much more powerful than any of that. She swallows it all back, slams her open palms onto the ground, and howls herself hoarse.

Mel watches her, mouth open wide, but even now she doesn’t back off. Anyone else would be halfway back to South Carolina by now, but Mel acts like this is all just another day’s work. She hovers over her, sad but steady, waiting with all the patience in the world for the inevitable moment when Janice’s strength burns itself out.

 _Go away,_ Janice thinks, slamming the ground again. _Get out of here while you still can. Jesus Christ, do you really think I won’t do this you too if you get close to me right now? Didn’t I do it once already?_

Mel has to know that she’s dancing with the devil, that the warnings are very serious, that Janice is not in control of herself right now. She knows Janice better than anyone, even her old man; she knows what she’s capable of and what she’s feeling. But still somehow she sticks around, aware of the danger, aware of all the horrible ugly things that Janice does and has and _is_. Still somehow she sticks around like this is okay, like any second now she’ll pull her into her arms and kiss her and say—

“Janice.”

“Get out of here!” It sounds like a sob, but it’s not. It can’t be. She’d never cry in front of Mel. She’d never cry in front of anyone. “Jesus, Mel, I’m warning you…”

“I know you are.” Mel is down on her knees now too, crouching down in front of her and reaching for her battered hands. The tenderness feels like a different kind of punch; Janice feels like she’s bleeding on the inside too. “Hush now.”

She said that before too, Janice remembers dumbly. When she couldn’t breathe, when she couldn’t shake the phantom of Mel’s body on top of her, when she couldn’t do anything, Mel looked at her with that same soul-rending tenderness and said _“hush now”_. She said it so softly, so slowly, like she wasn’t the one who just got socked in the nose, like she wasn’t the one who’d been hurt at all. Janice doesn’t understand how she does that, how she can take her own pain and turn it around, turn it into something sweet and kind, a balm to soothe a violent jackass who doesn’t deserve to be treated so kindly.

Mel brushes her knuckles with her thumbs. Her skin is so damn soft, so much the opposite of Janice’s; even if her hands were completely unmarred, the contrast would still be unbearable. Janice’s hands are calloused and worn, rougher than sandpaper even on a good day. Mel frowned the first time she touched her like this; she couldn’t fathom the idea that a woman might have the hands of a working man.

She frowns again now, but it’s very different. She’s used to Janice’s callouses by now; it’s the bruises that baffle her.

“Why’d you always gotta go and do these things to yourself?” she asks.

Janice closes her eyes, thinks of her father. His hands were just like hers. “Guess it’s in my blood.”

Mel _‘tsk’_ s a little. “It’s gonna sting,” she says with a world-weary sigh. “No two ways about it.”

“I want it to sting,” Janice tells her. She feels numb inside. “Jesus, Mel, they were practically kids.”

“Well, now.” Mel swallows, unexpectedly loud. “I’m sure they understood the risks.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” Janice growls. She balls her fist under Mel’s too-soft thumb; the skin cracks and burns, and the pain sharpens to something intoxicating. “Lemme up. I need to hit something.”

“I think you’ve hit enough ‘something’s to last you a fair long while,” Mel chides. “Now, you sit yourself down, nice and quiet-like, and let me take a look.”

Janice shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“You can, and you will.”

She’s trying to smile, but it’s weak and watery. Janice knows she has to be hurting over this as well, never mind that she wasn’t here to see it. Mel has the softest, sweetest heart she’s ever known; she’d cry at anything. There’s no way it’s not killing her to think of those two senseless, gruesome deaths. She’ll weep long and hard over this, Janice knows, but not until much later. She’ll wait until she’s sure it’s okay, until she knows beyond all shadow of doubt that Janice doesn’t need her more.

It’s not fair. It’s not right.

“Lemme up,” Janice says again, with urgency. “Mel, for the love of God, let me…”

Mel shakes her head. She’s not even really holding her down, just stroking her bruised knuckles, but somehow that has the same effect. There’s a rhythm to the motion, like there’s a rhythm to everything she does, back and forth and back again like a paper boat bobbing on a still calm lake. That’s Mel, still and calm and very beautiful; Janice is more like the boat, jostled and jolted by the smallest little ripples, skin so thin anything could tear it.

“Hush now,” Mel says again, then again and again.

And God help her, Janice does.

*

Mel’s definition of ‘taking a look’ is to pour half a bottle of perfectly good liquor over her hands.

It doesn’t help but it does hurt like hell, and it’s a damn good excuse for Janice to howl the place down. She’s had worse, much worse, but there’s something cathartic in the burn and the sting, in the way it gives her free rein to scream like the world’s ending. It’s over in a flash, just a couple of seconds on either side, but it’s enough to raze her throat all over again, and the gasping breathlessness that follows feels clean and pure for the first time in a long while. This one makes sense, and that makes all the difference.

When it’s over, Mel stares down at her hands with a helpless, lost look on her face. “Should I bandage them?”

Janice laughs. It sounds like a whine, like a hiccup. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, then, what?” There’s a flicker of panic in her voice now, and in her eyes as well. Mel isn’t really good at the whole first-aid thing; she doesn’t faint at the sight of blood or anything like that, but it’s pretty obvious she’s never had to deal with anything worse than a paper cut before. “I don’t think you oughta be walking around with them all bleeding and battered like that.”

“It’s fine,” Janice snaps. Her temper is as thin as her skin. “A couple of bruises, a little blood. It’s no big deal, all right? So quit trying to make it one.”

It feels like a whole lot more than a couple of bruises a little blood, but of course she doesn’t want Mel to know that. Not least of all because the pain feels good. It’s cathartic, brutal in a way that feels deserved, and she wants it to stay that way. She wants it to hurt as much as possible, but she keeps that to herself because she knows Mel would never let her get away with it.

Mel likes to help. She might not be particularly good at it, but she can’t sit quietly by if she knows another soul is in pain. If she knew how much Janice’s hands hurt she’d try to numb them, and that’s the last thing Janice wants right now. The pain sets her nerves on fire, gives her something simple to focus on, something less horrific than the wasted lives and days and artefacts, than all the terrible things that happened today because she was greedy or neglectful or arrogant.

She deserves the pain. She deserves a whole lot worse, frankly, but the pain is all she has and so she’ll take it. It helps her to feel in control, at least a little bit, and she clenches and unclenches her fists with relish, enjoying the way the bones scrape against the skin.

Mel touches her knuckles again, stilling her somewhat. She’s got an odd look on her face, reverent and thoughtful, and it makes Janice wish she could make her understand.

Janice’s hands are unpleasantly wet, but Mel doesn’t seem to care that she’s getting blood and booze all over her pretty white skin. She strokes across the cracked surface like there’s nothing messy in Janice’s hands, like there’s nothing messy in Janice at all. Looking up and finding the same sentiment shining in her eyes brings a lump to Janice’s throat; it makes her want to start screaming again, but she doesn’t because that would make Mel turn away.

“What can I do?” Mel asks, very quietly. “How can I make it less?”

“You can’t,” Janice says, but what she means is _I don’t want you to_.

She pictures her dead workers, or tries to; their faces are blurry, indistinct and anonymous. She didn’t even know their names. They’d only been on the site a week or so, a pair of boys still in their teens looking for adventure and excitement and a bit of pocket money. Any kind of work is rare these days, and rarer still is the kind that doesn’t come with a death warrant. Poor dumb kids, they probably figured this was one of the safe ones.

That was their mistake. They didn’t know the first thing about Janice Covington, didn’t even think to ask; they just assumed digging in the dirt for a few hours a day was easy money. Now they’ll never be able to tell their friends it’s not.

The thought makes her choke. She yanks her hands out of Mel’s reach, covers her mouth with one and bites down until her mouth fills with blood.

“Go away,” she whispers. She’s not talking about the moment or the tent. “Please, Mel. _Go_. Get out of here while you still can, while you still got legs and the strength to use ’em, while you still got your brains inside your head. I’m begging you: turn around and get the hell out of here.”

Mel shakes her head, then leans in to silence her with a kiss.

“I’m not going nowhere,” she says.

She leans back in, not to kiss her this time but to hold her. Janice tries to struggle, but her body has other ideas and before she even really knows what’s happening she’s got her forehead pressed to Mel’s shoulder, soiling the crisp clean blouse with her skin.

It takes everything she has not to cry, not to shake both their bodies with the weight of her grief and regret, not to let out some of the not-so-physical pain lodged deep inside of her. She clings feverishly to Mel’s collar, watches the blood from her hands mix with the sweat and the dirt and all the rest of it; Mel’s blouse is close to filthy now, but only in the places she lets Janice touch.

 _I’m ruining you,_ Janice thinks, staring at the stains. _Can’t you see what I’m doing to you?_

But still, somehow, Mel doesn’t cringe. She pulls back, but only slightly, just far enough to reach out and touch her. She cups her chin, tilts her face up just a little, and kisses all the places Janice refuses to water with tears. Her eyelids, her lashes, her cheeks, her lips. She doesn’t let anywhere escape uncleansed, and Janice wants so desperately to hate it, wants so desperately to hate _her_ , but she can’t, she can’t, she—

“— _can’t_.” Out loud, the word becomes something else, something horrible. She trips over it, chokes, then tries again. “Mel, I can’t promise it won’t happen to you.”

“Well, now, I know that,” Mel says. “And I don’t care.”

 _I do,_ Janice thinks, but Mel kisses her again to keep the words inside.

There’s weight behind the press of her body now, her hands sweeping in great long arcs over Janice’s, a promise of more and more and _more_. Janice trembles against her, tearful and angry and hating herself because she wants it, because she wants Mel, because those boys’ corpses aren’t even cold and all she can think about is this.

“Mel,” she whispers brokenly. “Mel…”

Mel kisses her again, then again. “I’m here,” she mumbles into her mouth, and Janice thinks of all the nights she’s said the very same thing. _I’m here. We’re here. You’re safe._

She’s leaning back now, Mel’s hands strong at her back, and she makes the mistake of letting her eyes flutter shut, of letting the world bleed out to blackness all around her. It only lasts a moment, but that’s long enough for Mel to shift over her, for her to lean in with her whole body to ease Janice down to the ground.

Janice’s eyes fly open.

It’s impossible, how fast the panic rises. Mel isn’t even fully on top of her this time, only halfway there, and Janice doesn’t even really know where she’s planning on taking this. All she knows is that she’s seizing again, that just the pressure of Mel’s hands and the dirt floor against her skin is enough to stop her breath in her throat, to bring all the horror right back up to the surface again.

She doesn’t hit her this time. Her arms are limp and useless at her sides, like she’s being pinned by something she can’t see. Her lungs are dead, her throat closed up, her stomach spasming, and it’s exactly like it was the last time, exactly the same, and she hates it, she hates herself, she hates everything. She feels so helpless under Mel’s hands, like she’s not in control, and once again she can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t—

“Get off!” she shouts, not caring if the whole damn world hears her. “Mel, get _off_!”

Mel does, of course, instantly. She doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t push, just draws herself away and gives Janice as much space as she can. She’s used to this by now, apparently. Janice hates that too.

She lies there frozen for a long long time, paralysed and shattered. Her body can’t seem to register the fact that it’s safe, that there’s nothing holding it down but its own stupid fears. She’s in terrible pain, not just in her hands but in other places too, places that aren’t bloody or bruised or anything else, places that make no sense. She feels lost inside herself, lost in the sensations she can’t seem to shake off, the horror of being held down, of having a body on top of her, of being strangled and smothered and swallowed, of being unable to get up and protect herself or the people she—

 _No!_ Not that. Not now. Not when she’s like this.

Dimly, distantly, she thinks she hears Mel’s voice, but it’s soaked up by her own, by the horror clawing at her throat and rending those awful sounds out of it. _You can’t be on top of me, you can’t, it’s not safe, I have to be in control, I have to protect you, I have to I have to I have to…_

“Janice?”

Janice struggles to sit up. The room tilts and sways around her, like she’s drunk or disoriented, like she’s taken a blow to the head.

“Oh God…”

Mel blinks a few times. She must be really worried, because she doesn’t call it blasphemy or anything. She just stares at her for a very long time, then softly says, “Oh _Janice_.”

“I’m sorry.” She blurts it out like a whimper. She feels delirious, like she’s caught in a fever. “I’m sorry, Mel. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I…”

“No,” Mel says. The word sounds strangely sharp on her soft tongue. “No, you don’t. Don’t you _ever_ … not ever. Janice, you…”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” It’s a confession, shuddering and shaking through her body, taking with it her last thread of strength. “Jesus Christ, Mel, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” She finds her face again, kisses it until it’s wet. It stays wet even after she pulls back, stained with tears. “My goodness, there’s nothing wrong in not wanting to…”

“But I _do_.” She doesn’t realise how true it is until she says it, until she searches inside herself and finds her body still hot. “I want you. I want _that_. I really, really do. But I can’t… I don’t…”

“Hush,” Mel says, soft just like always. “Slowly, now. Slow and easy.”

Janice nods, swallows a couple of times. “You don’t understand what it does to me. When you’re… when you get on top of me, when I’m on the floor and your body is over me… I can’t breathe.” That’s still true, even now. “Jesus Christ, why can’t I breathe?”

Mel closes her eyes. “I wish I knew.”

She’s cupping her neck now like she did last time, when Janice thought it would make her panic again but instead it helped her to calm down. It doesn’t quite manage that this time, but it doesn’t make things any worse either. Mel is stroking the nape of her neck, rhythmic and repetitive, the contact so light it almost tickles, and Janice lets it kick-start her breathing, lets it remind her that she’s the only one inside her skin. She gasps, her chest heaving, and she’s only dimly aware of Mel’s other hand, just a fraction heavier, resting in the space between her breasts.

“I do want you,” she says again, each word a steady exhalation. “I do.”

Mel studies her long and hard. When she breathes, it sounds a little laboured too, like she’s struggling nearly as much with this as Janice is.

“Is that all?” she asks, and her voice is suddenly uncharacteristically small.

 _No,_ Janice’s heart cries. _No, that’s not all. I want you, I need you, I…_

But it’s hard enough to think those things when she’s normal, when she’s not coming down from a horror show like this. She can’t say it; it would kill her if she even tried. The feeling suffocates her, the weight of one stupid syllable more than all of Mel’s body put together, and it’s all she can do not to give in to it again, not to curl up in a ball and shake herself into a coma.

It takes Mel a long moment to realise she’s not going to get the answer she wants. Janice watches the disappointment spill over her face with a queasy sort of detachment.

“Oh Janice,” Mel says again, and Janice is sure that she’s never said her name quite like that before.

They stare at each other for a long, drawn-out moment, then at last Mel shakes herself free. She scrubs a hand over her face, washing away the disappointment, then takes back her hands.

Janice’s skin tightens at the loss of contact, a cold wasteland left behind where Mel’s fingers were warming her. She wants to ask her to come back, to stay with her for a just little bit longer, just until her lungs remember how to do their damn job, but her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and her stomach is swirling with something wretched, a strange guilty sort of feeling that cuts her down and stifles the selfishness.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out instead. She’s not really sure what for, but it sounds a whole lot better than _‘I need you to stay with me because I’m a child’_. “Mel, I’m sorry. I’m…”

Mel shakes her head, cutting her off, then glides up to her feet.

“You be careful with those hands, now,” she says. “We wouldn’t want anything to get broken, would we?”

Janice glances down at them, still wet with too much liquor. There’s a poetic sort of irony there, she thinks; the liquor is her problem, the ‘too much’ is Mel’s. She wants to point that out, but even the prettiest words turn ugly in her mouth and so she keeps it to herself. Slowly, hesitantly, she touches the knuckles, letting her own fingertips replace Mel’s, tracing the swollen curve again and again until she’s not sure which part of her is the part that hurts.

There’s nothing broken in her hands. She can tell that much just by flexing her fingers a little bit. Mel looked at them closely enough that she should know it too. Maybe that’s just another mark of her sheltered, comfortable upbringing; she’s such a well-bred young thing, it’s no surprise that she’d have no idea what a broken bone actually looks like.

But then again, it’s not Janice’s hands she’s looking at.

*

Mel spends the night in her own tent.

Janice doesn’t even bother to go to bed at all. She probably wouldn’t have slept even if Mel did stay with her — just the thought of dreaming about those kids’ faces makes her want to be sick — but without her there’s no reason to pretend. She’s lost enough men, enough tunnels, enough of everything to know what’s waiting for her on the other side, and Mel poured the last of her booze over her goddamn hands so she can’t even drink herself into a dreamless stupor.

She changes her shirt, leaves her jacket off, and goes outside.

The dig site is freezing at night, the chill raising goosebumps where she’s left her arms exposed, but she doesn’t care. She prefers it that way; there’s a frozen feeling in her chest, and she always feels more comfortable when her outsides match her insides. It’s a horrible, hollow sort of sensation, a gnawing in her gut that reminds her of days without food back when she was a kid, the kind of raw full-body hunger that never quite goes away. It feels good to step outside into a world where the cold is something solid and real, something she can reach out and touch. If she razes her lungs hard enough, watches enough of her breath crystallise on the air, maybe she can fool herself into thinking the inside chill can be cured just as well with enough warm blankets.

She circles the site a few times, giving a wide berth to the collapsed tunnel and the mess it left behind. Not that the distance helps much; the place is cordoned off now, marked with great big signs you could see from the sky reading _‘danger’_ and _‘keep out’_. It doesn’t matter how far she goes, how hard she tries to avert her eyes, it’s utterly inescapable, and the roar of falling rocks fills her head until it’s pounding.

Alone in the chill, she lets herself think about her two dead men, idealistic young idiots she never got to know. Did Mel know their names?, she wonders.

That one’s a no-brainer. Of course she did; Mel knows just about everyone on the site and then some. She goes out of her way to talk to people, and she’s so damn easy to get along with that people just love talking to her in turn. Janice has no doubt those kids were exactly the same; given her penchant for chit-chat, Mel probably knew every little detail of their short lives, right down to their goddamn blood type.

That’s a sickening, horrible thought. Mel, who knows and loves everyone, who cares so deeply and with so much of herself… and Janice hasn’t once asked if she’s all right, if maybe she needs some time to deal with this too.

 _Selfish,_ she thinks, and wishes her knuckles didn’t hurt so she could punch something.

It’s different for her, and in so many ways that makes it much easier. She knows a few names, a couple of stories here and there, but she won’t let herself learn more about her people than she absolutely needs to. She learned that lesson the first time she got someone killed, so long ago now that even the nightmares have faded to memory. Nowadays, she keeps her nose and her slate as clean as she can; the men come and go, and so long as the earth gets shifted that’s all she cares about. Hell, it’s all she can afford to care about.

Mel will figure that out soon enough. With each bullet hole and collapsed tunnel, each threat and insult and fresh new danger, she’s learning the price to be paid for caring too much. One day, she’ll realise that it has to stop, that she has to shut it off before it kills her. You can’t survive out here if you care too much; Janice learned that decades ago, but Mel’s still young and green, a flower in this godforsaken wasteland. She’s too beautiful for this life, and Janice is already dreading the day she looks her in the eye and finds the same emptiness she sees in the mirror.

 _If I don’t get you killed,_ she thinks, _I’ll turn you into something worse. A living breathing zombie, heartless and soulless, just like me._

It’s the last thing in the world she wants for someone as precious as Mel. But the alternative is losing her entirely, to death or to heartbreak or to something else entirely, and the selfish childish part of her can’t help thinking that would be worse.

She doesn’t know how to reconcile that, the fear of losing her with the fear of what she’ll become if she doesn’t. There are so many different things that frighten her, so many fractured little pieces of her relationship with Mel that leave her broken and breathless, and she doesn’t know how to stop them from devouring her completely; it seems that the second she overcomes one, another rears its head without warning or invitation. It’s endless, countless, and it’s been years since she felt so small beneath something so powerful.

It tears her apart. Being with Mel, knowing the price, knowing that Mel doesn’t. All the little things she does, all the not-so-little things they’re becoming. It feels like dying. Worse, it feels like dying would be easier.

She can’t breathe when she thinks about it. Even now, out here alone in the cold and the dark, knowing that Mel is nowhere around, still she finds herself as helpless and out of control as she is when they get together. The ground drops out from underneath her, taking with it every safety net she ever had, every security blanket she ever wrapped around herself to make the world safer, everything she’s ever used to protect herself and the people she’s dumb enough to care about. Mel strips her naked, not just of her clothes but of her defences, and Janice has learned too many times how dangerous it is to be defenceless.

She’s not sure she’ll ever get over that. It’s burned inside of her, a brand on her heart and her soul, scars so deep the sun will never touch them. Mel won’t ever touch them either, but maybe one day she’ll know where to put her hands. It is terrifying beyond words that Janice actually kind of wants that.

She’s never felt like this before. She wants to think they’ll teach her how to be better but she doesn’t know if that’s possible. She doesn’t know if there’s enough left inside of her to change the only thing she’s ever been.

That cuts deep. Knowing that she might not be enough, that she might never be able to look at Mel the way Mel looks at her, that she might never be able to say _“I think I could fall in love with you.”_ It makes her so damn angry, the uncertainty, because Mel deserves more. She deserves better.

Mel deserves someone who can love, or at least who can be loved without panicking about it. She deserves a lover who can take as well as give, who can lie flat on her back and not sock her in the nose. Mel deserves _everything_ , goddammit, and Janice… well, right now she has nothing. And she’s not sure that’s something she can fix.

She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to shut off the parts of her that feel like this, the parts of her that scream and shut down when faced with things like feelings. It’s been bred in her for as long as she can remember, the need to stay alive, to survive above everything else, to protect the people that matter even if it means protecting them from her. She’s spent a lifetime learning to feel that way, a lifetime learning the cost of being loved. She doesn’t know if a second lifetime, one with Mel, will be time enough to unlearn it.

She hopes it will. She wants it to be. But she doesn’t _know_.

And she has always been so damn scared of what she doesn’t know.

*

Daybreak finds her outside her tent in a haze of cigar smoke.

Mel shows up bright and early for once, looking like a million dollars. She’s perfectly coiffed, dressed to the nines in another new outfit, practically glittering under the early morning sun. The sight of her makes Janice feel like a phoney, a flea-bitten mongrel who’s spent its whole life in a damn box; she wants to crawl into a corner with her tail between her legs, wants to hide someplace as dirty as she is, but Mel doesn’t give her the chance. She’s at her side in a flash, yanking the cigar right out of her mouth and putting it out.

Janice glares. “That’s rude.”

“Well, so’s that habit of yours.” She doesn’t even pretend to look contrite. “Not to mention dangerous. Or did you forget we got incendiaries here?”

“Haven’t blown myself up yet, have I?” Janice shoots back, and fumbles in her pocket for another cigar.

Moving without thinking, Mel raises a hand to slap her fingers away. For about half a second it looks like she’ll actually do it, but her wits catch up with her just in time, and she reels away before she does any more damage to Janice’s battered knuckles.

“Lord have mercy,” she sighs instead.

Janice snorts and lights up again real fast, before Mel has a chance to rethink it.

“He never did before,” she points out, unnecessarily sour. “Dunno why you think He’d start now.”

“Janice Covington!”

“Okay, all right. I’m sorry.” She’s not really, but she’s told far more heinous lies in her time. “Rough night, short temper. You know how it is.”

“Mm.” Mel sighs again, then leans in to study her face. Janice bites down on the urge to turn away, knowing what Mel will find there; she’s bedraggled, pinched and worn and utterly exhausted; next to Mel’s powder and shine, she must look like hell. “Don’t suppose you even tried to put your head down and get some sleep?”

Janice shrugs. “Had too much to do.”

“Too much angst running through that thick head of yours, you mean.”

“One or the other.”

Mel shakes her head again. She’s got a hand at Janice’s face, brushing back the loose strands of hair that always seem to break free and get in her eyes. “You silly thing…”

Janice grunts and pulls back, embarrassed in spite of herself by the show of affection, the warmth pouring into her skin through Mel’s touch. “Jesus Christ. Not in public.”

Mel opens her mouth to argue, but shuts it again pretty sharpish. Janice can see the wheels turning inside her head, realisation cutting in before she can blame this on stubbornness or arrogance or whatever the hell else. Maybe some time in the future they’ll be able to share a moment of tenderness in a place others might see, but that day is a long, long way away. For right now, Janice has no intention of letting Mel’s tenderness push their luck.

“All right,” Mel says, rolling her eyes. “Inside, then.”

 _Not a chance,_ Janice thinks. The last thing she needs is to be alone with Mel after spending the whole night thinking herself round in circles. She’s dizzy and so damn tired; God only knows what stupid crap Mel will wheedle out of her.

“I got work to do,” she says, biting down a little too hard on her cigar.

Mel shoots her a look could melt an iceberg at fifty paces. “Janice…”

So inside they go.

In private, Janice puts her walls up. She doesn’t give Mel a chance to coddle her, and she sure as hell doesn’t give her a chance to put her hands back on her; she knows what would happen if she did. The cigar serves as a barrier between them, a slow-burning repellant that keeps Mel a good three feet away, and she flaunts the damn thing for all it’s worth, sucking down smoke until she almost gags then breathing it out cool and lazy.

“I can’t do it, Mel,” she says, as matter-of-fact as she can when her heart and her hands are shaking.

Mel doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about. Janice can see the comprehension on her face, the awareness of where this is going, but she feigns ignorance anyway, pushing her glasses up her nose and squinting like a damn mole.

“Now, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“And I’m sure you do.” She massages her temples, drawing strength from the pain in her fingers, her knuckles, her goddamn brain. “It’s too damn dangerous. And I’m not talking about the social climate.”

“Well, then, what are you talking about?”

She knows. It’s obvious. She just wants to make Janice say it.

“I’m talking about _this_.” She spreads her arms, clenching the cigar between her teeth until her jaw aches along with the rest of her. “The dig, this life, the whole shebang. Jesus Christ, Mel, did you miss the memo where we lost two men yesterday? Two _kids_?”

Mel swallows, looking sad. “Do you even need to ask?”

“Yeah, I think I do. And that ain’t the half of it. You do remember how we first met, don’t you? Bullets and bodies flying all over the place, you being used like a goddamn human shield. You had bruises on your arms for days. Hell, it still gives you nightmares.”

“I know that,” Mel says, deathly quiet.

“Course you do. You lived it. You’ve seen it. But you still don’t get what it means. You still don’t get…”

She shakes her head, and hates that the rest of her body is shaking too. It’s right there on her tongue, the truth she’s been struggling with, and she hates that her first thought is _will she think I’m a coward for saying it?_

Mel doesn’t touch her. She just looks at her, and Christ, that’s enough. “Slowly, now.”

“Not this time.” Still, it helps. She doesn’t know why, but it does. “Mel. You have to know what you’re signing on for. You stick around here… you stick with _me_ , and you’re gonna bleed. You’re gonna get buried alive or shot up or knifed or God only knows what else. It’s gonna happen, it’s just a matter of time. And there’s no guarantee I’m gonna be able to stop it. And I can’t… Mel, I _can’t_.”

“I see.” Mel studies her for a beat or two, face inscrutable, then exhales very slowly. “You been sitting on that for a good long while, huh?”

“I guess I have.” She lets the cigar fall to the floor, then swiftly stubs it out with her boot. The shit’s hit the fan already; she doesn’t need the barrier now. “I can’t breathe when I think about it. You know what that’s like? You know how goddamn terrifying it is, not being able to breathe?”

“I reckon I do,” Mel says, very quietly, but Janice barely hears her.

“Anything that happens to you,” she goes on. “Anything that happens… Mel, that’s on me. You get hurt, it’s on me. You get killed, and it’s on me. I got your whole damn life in my hands. It’s so damn beautiful, Mel. Your life, your soul, every goddamn part of you… and to have that in my hands… _these_ hands…” She holds them up, fingers spread wide in all their bruised and brutal glory, and doesn’t even try to hide the tremors. “Hell, you’ve seen ’em. They’re not good hands.”

“Well, now,” Mel says with a sly, strained smile. “I could name a few parts of me that’d disagree mightily.”

“That’s because you don’t know any better,” Janice tells her hotly. She’s not going to let this get derailed into something less than it is. It’s tearing her apart enough as it is. “But you… Mel, you gotta shut up and listen to me, okay? You gotta hear me out on this.”

Mel’s smile flickers, then fades completely. “Janice…”

“I’m serious. You’re so delicate, so precious, and my hands… they’re not made for holding things like that. Christ, even you can see that. They’re made for shovels and pickaxes. They’re made for digging in the dirt for days on end, for smoking and shooting and strangling. They’re calloused and they’re bruised, and they’ll beat the tar out of anyone who even looks at them funny.”

“Now, what’s the bad in all of that?”

She doesn’t understand. Jesus Christ, why can’t she just understand? Janice turns away, a ninety-degree spin that leaves her head and stomach spinning. She can’t look at Mel when she says this, can’t crack herself open and spill all her fears out onto the floor if she has to look into those beautiful blue eyes when she does it.

“They…” Her voice breaks. “They can’t protect you, Mel. My hands, my body… not a single goddamn part of me.” She can’t breathe; just like before, she can’t breathe, but this time she won’t let it end her. “Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you understand? _I can’t protect you_.”

She hits the floor, legs giving out almost before she finishes, gasping and gagging and trying not to choke. The air is thick and much too heavy; it feels like she’s still got the cigar in her mouth, like she’s sucking down smoke and trying to suffocate herself. She’s never said so many words to another person, at least not anything she felt as deeply or as passionately as this, and it’s just about burned the life clean out of her.

Mel doesn’t crouch beside her. She doesn’t look at her. Maybe she senses how embarrassing this is, or maybe she knows that Janice would shatter if she so much as looked at her now; either way, she keeps her distance and keeps quiet.

It stays like that for a long, long time, Janice on her knees and Mel stood a couple of feet away, neither one of them speaking. Janice can hear Mel’s breathing, and wishes she could make her own sound as easy. It’s hard to tell why Mel drags it out as long as she does, whether she’s trying to give Janice space and time or whether she needs a little for herself, but she holds it and holds it, the thick air spreading out and flowing between them like a burial shroud or the satin of her nightdress.

At long last, and barely above a whisper, she says, “I wish I knew where you got this saviour complex of yours.”

Janice bristles. The indignation gives her a kind of strength, and she lurches back up to her feet.

“It ain’t a _complex_ ,” she mutters. “It’s _life_.”

“It’s your gosh-darn ego, is what it is.”

Well, Janice can’t exactly argue with that. “Pot-ay-toe, pot-ah-to.”

Mel sighs, and then Janice feels her hands on her shoulders, slender and so unbearably strong. The contact makes her want to weep, for more reasons than she can count.

“Janice,” Mel says gently. “I say this with love. Truly, I do. But there is not a soul in the whole darn world who would ever put their life in your hands.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m serious.” Her hands slide down, find Janice’s battered knuckles. “Because you’re right. You don’t got good hands. Not a bit of it. Your hands are clumsy and too big, and half the time they don’t got the first idea what they’re doing.”

“That better not be a dig at my—”

“Now, you hush up and listen.” She’s smiling, though; it’s a little tight and a little bitter, but it’s there and somehow that makes everything hurt just a little bit less. “You don’t got saviour’s hands, Janice; you got sailor’s hands. Callouses and bruises and all the rest of it. You got the hands of someone who don’t know how to use any other part. And a gal would have to be a darn fool to put her life in them.”

Janice swallows hard. She’s not sure whether to be angry or humiliated. “You trying to make me feel like hell?”

“No,” Mel says, very quietly. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m not here to be saved or protected, or anything else you got into that stubborn head of yours. I can do all that perfectly well on my lonesome.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Now, don’t you talk back to me, telling me what I can and can’t do.” She tugs lightly on Janice’s hand, pulls her around until they’re face-to-face. “Janice. Look at me, now. I know what I’m getting myself into. I knew it the day I came out here, and I done learned it every day since. I know what the world is like. Out there or in here, or any old place you’d care to name. And I know what _you’re_ like too.”

“Yeah?” Janice tries to smile, but she feels like she’s been punched in the teeth. “And what’s that?”

“Stubborn and arrogant, and so gosh-darn foolish I want to shake you sometimes.” The words are hard, but her smile is about the softest thing Janice has ever seen. “I don’t want to be safe, Janice. I don’t want to be protected or taken care of, or any of that other nonsense. You think I’d’ve come all the way out here in the first place if I was the least bit interested in staying safe? You think I’d’ve let you sweet-talk me into your bed?”

“Mel…”

“Janice.” Mel’s lips are on hers now, wet and warm, and when she whispers into her mouth the words taste like love. “I could be killed tomorrow. I could be buried alive or shot at or carried off into the night or any one of a million things. But so could anyone. And you… Janice, you can’t even remember to eat breakfast half the time. You can’t keep yourself in one piece, what chance do you think you got with the rest of us?”

It’s a hard truth, but it tastes so sweet pressed against her lips like that. Janice swallows and pulls away; she’s trying so damn hard to breathe, and the effort strangles her common sense, the part of her that’s been holding those other truths at bay. She doesn’t have enough in her to do both, stay breathing and stay strong, and before she even realises she’s thinking it, she’s blurting out the deeper truth, hurling it out onto the air like a curse or a scream.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Mel sighs, like it’s not the most terrible confession in the world, like she knew it even before she heard it. Janice might not be the subtlest brick in the wall, but she always figured she was more subtle than that. Apparently not.

“Well, now,” Mel says after a beat or two. “I can’t promise you won’t. But I’ll wager you can’t make that promise yourself either, now, can you?”

“I…” She sighs, then scowls. “I guess not.”

“Mhm.” Mel lets her glasses slip down her nose a little, stares at Janice over the top of them like a goddamn school teacher. “So, then, you gotta ask yourself: is it worth ending your days with a heart full of regrets for all the things you might’ve had, just because you’re too darn scared of losing them now?”

It’s a good question, but not an easy one to answer. Janice takes a deep breath, breathes in Mel’s perfume, and feels her lungs expand fully for the first time in days.

“I don’t know,” she says at last. “It’d sure as hell be easier.”

Mel chuckles, warm and sweet. “Well, now. Since when was Doctor Janice Covington the kind of gal who’d take the easy way out?”

Janice shakes her head. The answer is obvious, or at least it is to her, but Mel doesn’t seem to see it at all.

_Since she fell in love with you._

*

Mel leaves the conversation behind after that. Janice does not.

Characteristically, if rather infuriatingly, she spends the rest of the day agonising over it, turning it over and over in her head until it’s spinning again. The things she said, the things she didn’t say, the things she’ll take to the grave wondering if Mel knows. She wants to turn herself inside-out, wants to draw all the panic out of herself and pour it into Mel until she’s the one who can’t breathe, until she truly understands, if only for a moment, how it feels to not be in control for the first time in her life, to be helpless, to be _scared_.

She can’t do any of that, though. And for all that she wants Mel to understand, for all that she’d give anything to see that recognition in her eyes, she would never wish the feeling on her. It’s not worth Mel’s pain to diminish her own.

So, instead, she keeps it all in. She holds it inside herself for the rest of the day, holds it down until it’s fit to burst out of her, until the sun is going down and they’re back in her tent, until Mel sets aside whatever she was working on and smiles at Janice like she wants to tear the clothes right off her.

Janice doesn’t smile back, but she shrugs out of her jacket and unbuttons her shirt, goes along with it because it’s easy, because it’s comfortable and familiar. She wishes the rest of the world was that way too, wishes that she could wash away all her struggles just by rolling around with the woman she—

“ _No_.”

She doesn’t even realise she’s said it aloud until the wanting look falls off Mel’s face and replaces itself with a frown.

“I beg your pardon?” she asks, with honest confusion.

Janice swallows hard. She can feel her chest start to hurt, but she wills herself to say the words anyway. Better that it just explode and kill her outright than force her to live like this forever.

“I can’t,” she says, very softly. “This ’saviour complex’ or whatever it is you think I have. I can’t just… exorcise it out of me. I can’t make it go away just because you’ve said it doesn’t matter.”

“I know that,” Mel says, still frowning. “My goodness, I’d never expect you to.”

Janice takes a deep breath. It hurts more than anything she’s ever known. “And I can’t…” Her lungs burn; her head pounds. “I can’t say what you want to hear. What you… what you deserve to hear. Mel, I can’t tell you I…”

It strangles in her throat, the breath and the word both, just like every other time she’s tried.

This time, though, Mel understands, and she takes her hands and holds them until the shaking stops.

“I know.”

“Is it okay?” God damn her, she sounds like a child. “If I can’t… if I can’t ever tell you that?”

Mel’s eyes are impossibly bright in the dimming light. Janice hopes that when her time comes she’ll die looking into them. If she can manage that, she thinks, maybe she’ll find the peace that’s eluded her so completely in life.

“Yeah,” Mel says. “It’s okay.”

“You sure?”

Mel closes her eyes. It’s like someone slamming a shutter down, cutting off the world; it amplifies the pain in Janice’s chest until she’s convinced it really will kill her.

“Janice,” Mel says, speaking slow and careful with her eyes still closed. “I don’t care what you say. I care how you _feel_.”

“Oh.” She wants to hide. Her lungs are on fire, her breath ragged and gut-rendingly painful. “Well, uh…” She gasps and gasps and struggles with everything she has to keep from drowning in this. “I do. Feel. I do.”

“I know you do,” Mel says with a gentle smile. “I reckon you’re the only one who didn’t.”

That’s probably true. Janice might be a genius by all accounts when it comes to archaeology and ancient history and a whole mass of other stuff no-one else takes seriously, but she’s a self-confessed idiot when it comes to her own inner workings. That’s not a secret, and it’s sure as hell not one she’d ever be able to keep from Mel. Mel has seen more of her than anyone else Janice has ever met. Not even her father knew her half so well, and she’s never had another lover who understood her so intimately, who saw her so completely, who…

“Mel?”

Finally, Mel opens her eyes. The world becomes bright again, and so beautiful. “Hm?”

“I…”

_I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe._

“Slowly, now.” She always says that. Like a mantra, or else a promise. _We got the rest of our lives. You don’t gotta spill out everything in one strangled breath._ She won’t say that part, but she’ll say the rest. Again and again and again, as many times as it takes for Janice to understand. “Slowly.”

Janice nods. She chokes, swallows, then chokes again, but she won’t let her breath stop now. This is too important.

“I want you on top of me.”

She’s not sure what she expects. Disappointment, probably, or frustration or rejection or any one of a thousand other unpleasant things. They’ve just been talking about feelings, about love or whatever the hell passes for it in a heart as tarnished and tainted as hers, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that Mel was hoping for a very different kind of confession. The choking, the breathlessness, the panic and the urgency… it lent itself to something else, something deeper and richer and just as true. It lent itself to the words she can’t say, the words she might not ever be able to say, and she hates herself for letting Mel believe, if only for a second, that she could.

This… it’s basal, banal, brutal. It’s twisting love into lust, feelings into fornication, and a woman like Mel deserves a whole lot more. Janice wouldn’t blame her if she just slapped her and stormed away.

If it were anyone else, she probably would have done exactly that. She’d see the evasion for what it is, beauty and innocence remade into something crude and shameless, Pappas purity twisted into Covington crudeness.

But Mel isn’t anyone else; she’s _Mel_ , the woman who knows Janice inside and out, who has seen her panic not once but twice at just the idea of doing this. She’s seen Janice tremble and choke; she’s heard her gasp _“I can’t breathe”_ a thousand times by now, and she knows how close it came to breaking her. She knows precisely what this means, and she sees that there’s nothing basal or banal in it at all.

Worthless though it is, _‘I want you on top of me’_ is as close to _‘I love you’_ as a messed-up control freak like Janice Covington will ever get, at least for the foreseeable future, and Mel… somehow, impossibly, Mel understands that.

Mel knows her. Mel sees her. And when Janice says _“I want you on top of me,”_ Mel hears _‘I think I could love you too’_. She hears _‘I want you to show me it’s all right to be helpless,’_ and she hears _‘I want you to promise you won’t die if we do this.’_ She hears Janice, in a way that no-one else ever has, in a way that Janice never let them.

Mel knows her. Mel sees her and hears her. Somehow, by some goddamn miracle, Mel loves her. 

And so, recognising the words for the truths they are, she smiles the most radiant smile, takes Janice by her bruised, calloused, clumsy hands, and kisses the breath back into her.

“Well, now,” she says. “I think we can manage that.”

*


End file.
